


The Problem of Virtual Reality

by agentj



Category: Probe (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-20
Updated: 2010-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-13 22:23:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,762
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/142369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/agentj/pseuds/agentj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>At a virtual reality demonstration, something goes wrong, and only Austin James (with Mickey's help) can find out why.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Problem of Virtual Reality

**Author's Note:**

  * For [karihan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/karihan/gifts).



Mickey was never quite sure how she managed to get herself into these situations. It always started so innocently enough. She started her day as usual driving Austin's station wagon to the warehouse (after gassing it up first -- she never knew where he'd want to go, and he never had the patience or the inclination to doing regular service on his car). Instead of letting her in, her passkey triggered a message from Austin about a demo at the Gallery, so off she went again across town.

When she got to the Gallery, a small crowd of people were gathered around a large projector TV's image of a computer landscape. It looked surreal, blocky, like an MTV Dire Straits video. Austin was in amongst the crowd, but looking out of place without a jacket and tie like the others. He waved her over, and standing beside him, Mickey could see a young man standing beneath the projected image. He was wearing what appeared to be a helmet and large sun visor covering his eyes with wires dangling from the side and back.

"Mike Gibson and his partner Grant Dunbar have been tweaking and perfecting a virtual reality suite using my VR game technology," said Austin in a whisper to Mickey over his shoulder. "Serendip thought it good PR to hold a public demonstration. That's Mr. Gibson giving the demo."

"Whatever I do," said Mr. Gibson, "the program does, too. It mirrors my movements so that I get a full 360 degree picture of everything around me." He then lifted a gauntleted arm, more wires weaving itself in and out of the material. "Now, I can also interact with any object I see as well."

He reached out to mid-air and appeared to clasp something. Mickey looked up at the screen and saw a computer-generated hand mimicking his movements, grabbing hold of a door handle. Gibson pulled back his arm, and the projection of the door pulled back, too. He marched in place, and the image on the projection moved forward as if he were walking inside.

A chorus of congratulatory applause erupted.

Gibson smiled; it was the only part of his face visible under the large helmet and visor.

That smile would haunt Mickey's dreams for some time to come.

Suddenly, just as he was about to continue with his demonstration, sparks seem to erupt from the mat on which he stood, the wired gauntlet and the helmeted visor. Gibson's body jerked back, then flopped about over like a fish out of water.

"Stop!" shouted Austin as he grabbed someone who had instinctively stepped forward to help the man. "Don't touch him!"

Austin grabbed a hand towel that was laying on a table nearby and pulled the wires that connected the gadgets to the computer. Gibson's body stopped twitching and became still. Quite too still, Mickey thought.

Kneeling next to the young man, Austin checked his pulse, then looked up to a stunned Mickey. "He's dead."

* * *

Mickey was unable to give the police any statement about the incident that was any different than anyone else's, of course, but they still wanted to know her affiliation with Austin James anyway. Austin, who was dangerously unhelpful to the police officer who wanted to take his statement, was told in no uncertain terms should he be leaving town any time soon.

Somehow, despite all of that, Austin managed to finagle the computer and VR equipment out of police custody. And, naturally, she had been the one to lug it all into the station wagon and back to the warehouse.

And that was where she was, watching Austin dismantling a possibly faulty VR helmet on his lab table.

"There's nothing wrong with this helmet," said Austin with his usual mix of incredulous disgust, which signaled to Mickey that he was unhappy with the fact that he hadn't (yet) found a plausible explanation for the accidental electrocution.

"What about the mat?" asked Mickey, "Or the...glove thingie."

"No, there's nothing wrong with the sensor mat or the VR gauntlet either," he answered with a sigh. "None of his modifications had damaged the integrity of any of my original equipment."

Mickey bit on her nail as she watched Austin. He stood for a moment, hands on hips as he stared at his creations on the desk. It wasn't the first time something he created was used to kill another human being. And as so long as human beings were determined to hurt each other, it likely wouldn't be the last. But that look on his face was one she had grown accustomed to seeing every time another dead body crossed his path. It was a look of injustice, of a quiet passionate rage that knew for all his intellect and knowledge, he hadn't the ability to undo what was done. All he had left was the truth, to find the answer that no one else could find, and give the deceased the final peace it sought.

"I'm going in," declared Austin and grabbed the equipment.

"You can't!" Mickey cried. "What if it kills you?"

Austin paused a moment before answering. "Then I'll have failed to find out what killed Mike Gibson." With Mickey's continued look of concentrated worry, he sighed.

"Don't worry. I'll be safely behind a computer monitor. And so will you. Bonaparte will take my place." Austin shot Mickey his best twinkling, dimpled smile and walked across the lab where a skeleton hung noosed on display. He picked up the jumble of bones -- which Mickey disturbingly had learned were from a real corpse that Austin had put together when he was about 10 -- and plopped it on the lab chair. He wheeled the chair over the senor mat and plopped the VR helmet on its head. As he started back over to the VR computer, Austin snapped his fingers. "Oh, wait. I'm also going to need this," said Austin and turned to grab the prosthetic hand from a cupboard, fixed it to the chair, and put on the VR gauntlet. Finally, he grabbed a pair of electrical gloves from the lab desk and handed them to her. "Here. If something goes wrong, pull the plug."

Mickey pursed her lips and put on the gloves.

Pulling up a stool, Austin hunkered over the keyboard and typed the command to start the program. Mickey watched over his shoulder as the pixilated world came to life on the monitor before them.

"Uhhh," said Austin, "move the chair back and forth."

Right. Of course. He needed to move the character forward in the game to get to the door on the screen. Mickey walked behind the skeleton and carefully put a gloved hand on the headrest, then slowly rocked the chair back and forth on the mat. "Like that?"

"That's good. Okay. There. Now stop."

Mickey came back to Austin's side where he picked up the remote joystick to control the arm. She turned to look, and the prosthetic lurched, opened and closed around an imaginary object, then pulled back. On the screen, the door opened before them.

"Right. Now what?"

Austin stared at the screen, then jumped up from the stool. "Give me a glove," he said, and took one of the electrical gloves from Mickey's right hand. "Watch the monitor. Tell me if you see anything."

Austin stood behind the skeleton rig, pulled his sleeve up and grabbed the skeleton's head, turning it this way and that, up and down slowly.

"What am I looking for?" asked Mickey.

"Something unusual," replied Austin. "Something out of place."

She stared at the screen feeling quite out of place. Then she pointed at it. "Is that supposed to be there?"

Austin stopped and came back to look at the monitor. On the screen was a duelling pistol sitting on a table just inside the door with the words, "The Problem of Thor Bridge" written in very small letters. Taking up the joystick again, Austin made the hand reach out and touch the object.

Suddenly the whole rig sprang to life with a jolt of electrical current. It made Mickey jump with a squeak of surprise. Austin dashed over and pulled the wires from the rig.

He smiled. "Well, well, well," said he. "I believe we have found quite the Sherlock Holmes fan."

Mickey looked back at him confused.

Pulling off the electrical glove, Austin went back to the computer and typed in another command. The screen switched to text, and the words "The Problem of Thor Bridge" appeared at the top of the screen.

"It's a Sherlock Holmes tale. In it, a woman is brutally shot after a heated debate with her children's governess. The governess, of course, has been having an affair with the woman's wife, and she found out. A gun is found in her dresser drawers, and she is nearly marched to the gallows. Instead, Sherlock Holmes discovers that the woman had, in fact, committed suicide, planting the gun in hopes to cast suspicion on the governess."

"Oh God," cried Mickey. "D'you mean Mr. Gibson committed suicide?"

"No!" grumbled Austin, pulling his mouth into a grimace. "Gibson's only job was to modify the equipment -- make the sensors work together. No, our real culprit is the programmer, Grant Dunbar. I hope we can alert the police in time."

Mickey dashed to the phone and made the call. As the police located the suspect, Austin rummaged through the computer code and found a literal mine of booby-traps meant to catch up Gibson at every turn, along with enough evidence to be as clear as a confession.

When the call came that the police had found Mr. Dunbar attempting to board a plane to Puerto Rico, Mickey found Austin resting with his feet up on the coffee table and a large, plastic green pipe in his mouth.

"Tell me, Austin," Mickey asked after she relayed the message from the Chief of Police, "how did you know it was Dunbar? And why did he do it?"

"Simple! He coded random objects in the game to act like electrical outlets, each one of them named after some Sherlock Holmes tale. Any time the gauntlet made 'contact' with them, the program sent an electrical current through the equipment."

"How terrible!" she exclaimed.

"As to why," he continued, "it turns out Gibson planned on double-crossing Dunbar. He had contacted another programmer to re-write the subroutines, cutting Dunbar out of the business altogether."

Mickey grimaced. "How ironic. Doubly double-crossed."

"Quite. It was rather elementary, my dear Mickey," said he, and he blew bubbles from his pipe.


End file.
